


Zero-Sum

by artoni



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2857844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artoni/pseuds/artoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was such a good man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zero-Sum

**Author's Note:**

> Warning; gratuitous amounts of headcanon and extreme extrapolation.
> 
> Tumblr draft posted 12/12.

He's in his twenties when he first sees her, and at first, he doesn't think too much of her. She's plain, and they're on leave, and most of the others are just looking to have some fun while they can. Robbie rolls his eyes and while he does smile and laugh with them, he's also the first one to smack another on the back of his head and tell him _not cool_ when the line of joking goes past joking. 

(he's always been a momma's boy, maybe, but with Dad always away she was the one who raised him, and while he hasn't suffered for father figures as a military brat he learned quickly that sometimes the ones directly related to you can also be the worst)

When they're all packing up to leave, he lingers, saying he'll catch up, and she seems more taken aback than anything when he presses a bit more in to her hand and says that no, she's fine just the way she is, please ignore whatever they said and she should treat herself to something nice.

 _She's_ the one who holds on to his hand with a 'wait', and surprises him by asking if he didn't think the same way as them why he didn't say something sooner, and then she asks if he /does/ think with them that she's just too ugly to get anyone- 

-he's tripping over his words by the time she shuts him up with a dare. " _Prove it_ ," she says, eyes narrowed, and and he's caught in his own attempt to be chivalrous and can't possibly say no.

\--- 

Maybe he dug his own grave in this, but he honestly can't say he regrets it. Her mind proves itself as quick as his own, maybe even more, and he finds himself laughing and finding her more attractive by the day. He thought that this was maybe just a friendship, that she'd find someone else to convince her that she's worthy of love, but he finds himself pleasantly surprised when she's the one who urges things further. Maybe a bit aggressively, like she's afraid she'll lose him if she isn't, and maybe he is a bit scared because he's not sure he can give her what she wants 

and then she tells him that she wants _him_

and things just spiral from there because he's come to want her, too. Her mind, her laugh, her stubbornness, her _simplicity_ , her way of challenging him and his perceptions at every moment.

It's a manic love, a sudden set of needs and desires, and the other boys laugh at him but he is _happy_ , and as long as she is, too, the world can turn as it will. 

\--- 

For all their love, for all the whirlwind, they're not _stupid_ \- if anything, he's constantly amazed at how someone from such a simple background could be so _wise_. They make a few mistakes, of course, but they've both agreed to wait until they're ready to go further- and they both /want/ to go further, they want to spend the rest of their lives with one another, for all the good and bad and times that Rob wants to pull his hair out in frustration. Because even as she yells back at him, it's just like venting steam, and they always end up holding one another after calming down and somehow working it out. He says stupid things, she does stupid things, they still want to make this happen and that's what counts.

So when she mentions, in the middle of his school term, that she's pregnant- he's stunned. He's even more stunned when she quietly says that she wants to carry it to term, and he asks her if she's sure, but- for all his uncertainty, there's nothing but seriousness in her face, and he has to linger for a few moments before taking her hands in his and pressing them to his lips. 

They'll make it work. Neither of them are fully ready, at least /he/ thinks, but if she's sure he knows better than to challenge her, and for all that he's afraid... 

They can do this. Together.

\--- 

Mom and Dad both come to the marriage ceremony, as do the rest of his friends. Some of which are still in the service, others are starting to drift away but are still happy for him. Her own side seems a bit empty, but Mom is nothing but welcoming to her, even if Dad is...well. 

Dad. 

They give him some alcohol, he asks some of the boys to help him keep him in line, they have a very brief heart to heart before Rob makes the conscious decision to _enjoy_ his wedding and new wife and not let that bring him down. 

He's got too bright a future to dwell on the past. 

\--- 

He's stepping out from his last final when he gets the phone call, and if he could grow wings, he'd already have been halfway across town. As it is, he probably breaks a few laws getting to the hospital, mind racing- she's _early_ , but she's in the best hospital, she's not _ready_ , neither of them are ready, god let him not miss anything-

-by the time he gets there, it's already too late. At first he's just frustrated with having missed it, but then the doctor takes his arm and pulls him aside and he feels something inside him shatter. 

But she is there, waiting for him, when they let him in - and for a while, they can do nothing, and then he touches her hand and she takes his and then they just hold each other and share the pain. 

\--- 

By now, he has his degree, and a few 'simple' papers are beginning to skyrocket. There's a few weeks in which he had _considered_ moving to medical science, but she put an end to that with hands on hips and yelling that he wasn't damn well going to give up his specialty for _her_. It ended up in another yelling match, which in turn ended up with them lying together in a loose embrace, and a long period of silence that neither was willing to break.

Eventually, she tells him she wants to try again. He knows exactly what she means, and he doesn't respond at first, because he's very sure /he/ isn't ready to go through that. But she knows him well enough to know that his tightening arms mean that he's simply _afraid_ , and she sighs and turns to hold him while he lingers over it all.

He asks for some time. She kisses him, and of course she gives it to him, and it's only after he finishes his next draft that he's able to move past it all and take her hands in his again and say that he's ready. She asks him if he's sure, and he pulls her close to him, and maybe neither of them are a hundred percent certain but at least they're willing to /try/. 

\--- 

He's lost contact with most of the boys, and it seems that the new friends he's making half want him for his mind and growing fame. He shrugs most of them off, keeping a few that he, too, can use, and otherwise devotes himself to his studies and his wife and his mother 

and then his mother gets sick. 

They have her move closer, but she's ailing, quickly; Robert barely realizes how little time they have left until it's _then_ , and she assures him that she'll love to see herself become a grandmother don't you worry 

and then it becomes she'd _have loved_ to see herself become a grandmother

and it seems like it's all one big jumble of _pain_ and, at the same time, _joy_.

His daughter carries the name of his mother, and his wife carries _him_. 

\--- 

Abigail is bright, beautiful, and everything he could have ever wanted. She may remind him of his mother every time he sees her, but she reminds him of the _happy_ times, and she reminds him that he made a promise long ago to not be like his father. To _be there_ , to _enjoy_ being there, and to treasure every moment. She reminds him of his wife, too, and his wife wears this little smile every time she sees Robert holding their daughter, and it brightens up her face even as she grows paler and paler. 

They don't know why she hasn't fully bounced back, since the birth, and why she's more prone to sickness- they see doctors, and there's a lot of mumbo-jumbo that makes his head spin and he realizes he would have been completely out of his field with medicine. Robotics make sense; robots only do the things you program them to do, and are actually very simple when you get down to it. The human body, on the other hand... 

It's fragile.

So fragile and flawed.

Abigail is five when she is dressed in black, and she does not fully understand why her father is crying and clinging to her, but she knows enough that when /she/ does that he holds her back and tells her everything will be fine- so she does that to him, but when he stops crying, something still feels wrong. 

\--- 

He never thought he'd be raising a daughter single-handedly, but it's a sort of joy on its own. Some of his wife's family reaches out, but she was never close to them, and he always respected her choices to stay away- and he respects them now. He devotes himself fully to Abigail, doting on her, but at the same time trying to urge out those pieces of her mother that he can still see within.

She rises to meet every expectation he ever had, and more.

She's a challenge and a handful and at some times there is some shouting, but it's rare; she is /not/ her mother, and he's keenly aware of that, and while Dad didn't shout often those times are still with him to this day, and he reigns himself in so that she will not have the same memories. Even so, she frustrates him as much as she delights him, she worries him as much as she elevates him... 

She is everything to him. Pain, joy, and everything in between. 

She is the most amazing creature he has ever known, and he is constantly amazed that he played a part in making her.

\---

Years pass, and he is reminded of a song his mother used to play for him- _captured on a carousel of time_ , the voice would sing. It certainly feels like they're going round and round and round, back and forth, Abigail alternatively getting in to trouble with the rising 'bot-fighting' rings (he rolls his eyes at the application of some of his designs, but moves past it), showing off her achievements in school, having flings with young people he only approves of so much, and back and forth and back and forth. 

She's accepted for an internship at Krei Tech, another rising technological company, and one he's worked with, in the past, no less. He approves of the young CEO as much as he does Abigail's trysts, but this is on a professional level; he could say that for a lot of the people he works with. There's not so much a suspicion as an innate wariness, but as Abigail moves from an intern up in to a stronger position, he begins to let down his guard. 

He's not sure about doing so and there are still too many NDAs for his liking, but, well. Business, and no small amount of science. He's taken a job at the local university by now, and they're honored to have him, and it at least keeps him close to all of this as Abigail begins charting her own future and there is only so much more he can do to guide her. 

Even so, though, she always comes back to him- of her own free will. His little girl always comes home to him, and remains the steadiest focus in his life.

And then she isn't. 

And then he is alone. 

\--- 

They give him bereavement leave, but he still feels as if this one, this death, has broken him. The students notice and offer their own sympathies, but as he had so many years ago, when solace is offered, he only uses it to pull himself back together and carry on. 

He sees a therapist, briefly, but is painfully aware of the papers he was made to sign before and after Silent Sparrow. _All_ of them were made to sign the papers, but to him it was like a slap in the face, an _insult_ \- an attempt to cover up the accident and pretend it never existed.

But it's not really an accident if there was a warning and a chance to stop it, now, was there?

He'd shouted, then, screamed, because he had told his daughter that her mother would have been so proud of her- and then he had sent her off in to the care of another, and that other had _let her go_. There is a lingering, rolling hatred in his gut, a sickness he's never known- this is _different_ from her mother's death, from _his_ mother's, because _this could have been avoided_. 

He is sure that this was not a failure of science; this was a failure of _man_.

But what can he do? He is powerless, for all of his knowledge, and he can only force himself to go on by telling himself that he is stopping the next generation of Kreis before they even begin. He is spoiling what seeds Krei tries to sow, he is denying him any further Abigails, even as Krei grows greater and greater and Callaghan feels sicker and sicker he forces himself to _go on_. 

And if one of his students shows an interest in medical science along with engineering, the same thing that stumped him all those years ago? He can only encourage that, too, because perhaps- perhaps that student can find the solutions the doctors could not.

\---

He is watching Krei approach the boy.

And he _is_ a boy, small and brilliant, the younger brother of that student who has finally completed his project and even if it's not quite what Callaghan thought it would be, it's brilliant still. It clearly runs in the family, because what Hiro has made is amazing, and could do so very much.

He _can't_ let Krei have this.

So he steps in and denies Krei yet again, hands the boy his acceptance letter because there's no question of it at this point, and then wanders off to again study the microbots.

They could do so very much.

 _So very much._

It hits him like a slap in the face, a piece of a puzzle falling in to place; these? These have more applications than Hiro thought, than Hiro could have dreamed, but he's already hearing the voice of his wife asking _are you sure?_ as he tilts his head and wonders 

_if_

maybe it's time to deny Krei for _good_.

_Are you sure, Robbie?_

He needs time to consider this, but there _isn't_ time. He's already walking off, pushing himself forwards, afraid that if he doesn't then there won't be another chance because this- 

this-

 _Are you sure, Rob?_

A fumble of keys and he's reached chemical storage. A quick mental map of the building, and- here. There. Let that mixture eat through, and it's already crackling in his face, surprising him with how quickly it's taken- 

He has to _move_

_are you sure? are you sure? areyousureareyousureareyousureareyousureareyousure_

He pulls the fire alarm, starts helping others out, because this- if he's sure of one thing, he's sure he can't turn back. He'll _never_ be able to turn back, so he needs to move quickly, and cut himself off from everything so that it can't hold him back

and that includes screaming in his head, _yes, I am sure!_

He never lied to his wife before, or even to her memory, but he has to now. It silences her, and maybe another piece of him is shattering at the thought, or maybe that's something else. But with the flames already becoming an inferno he has to move quickly if he doesn't want to burn up with everything else.

The neurocranial transmitter is right where Hiro left it, and he grabs on to it like a lifeline. Mania has seized him and can only ride it, now, bringing the microbots to him to shield himself as the world around him is consumed in a fire of his own making. _Everything_ burns, his past, his present, everything he's built his life to accomplish but in the end, what has all that gotten him?

He's done everything he can.

It's now time to do everything he _can't_.


End file.
